Budapest. U.S. President Donald Trump’s former political strategist, Steve Bannon, plans to work with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in the run-up to European Parliament elections next year, Bannon told private broadcaster RTL in an interview.
Bannon, a former chairman of the right-wing Breitbart.com website and an architect of Trump’s 2016 election win, has set up a movement to elect right-wing nationalist and populist members in European Parliament elections in May.
Bannon, who had held a public lecture in Budapest last May, said he has already visited Budapest a couple of times and met Orban and his aides - meetings, which have not been made public.
A government spokesman could not comment immediately.
Orban has welcomed the idea of Bannon’s group, called The Movement, saying it was time that someone from the United States came to Europe to spread conservative thinking instead of liberal values.
“If I could, we would headquarter the movement in Budapest. I love it so much there. But obviously it is not practical. We will spend a lot of time in Hungary between now and election day,” Bannon told RTL in an interview published late on Friday.